Power restored after major Hydro-Quebec outage in Montreal

Hydro Quebec - FILE PHOTO (Daniel J. Rowe/CTV News)

Power has been restored after a significant Hydro-Quebec outage on Monday left tens of thousands of customers without electricity.

At its peak during the afternoon, the outage cut power to just over 35,000 Hydro-Quebec clients. More than 31,000 of them were in Montreal, primarily east of Highway 25 in the Point-aux-Trembles area.

Hydro Quebec spokesperson Lynn St-Laurent said there was an issue at the Montreal East substation, causing the outage.

“Thanks to certain maneuvers, some major clients, such as the Suncor refinery, now have their power back,” she said before electricity was restored.

“We have not identified the problem yet. We have a team on site investigating the matter. We are putting every effort towards resolving the problem as quickly as possible.”

As of 4 p.m., the number of addresses without power in Montreal had dropped to about 500.